AI-Driven Pharmaceutical Startups Attract Soaring Investor Interest

With the explosive growth of artificial intelligence, especially with the emergence of ChatGPT and AlphaFold2, AI pharmaceuticals have seen rapid development. Currently, there are over 700 AI pharmaceutical companies worldwide, and China has nearly 80 AI pharmaceutical companies.

From January to September 2023, there were 24 financing events for AI pharmaceutical companies in China. Among them, 12 companies secured financing of over 100 million RMB, with the disclosed total amount exceeding 20 billion RMB. Most of these companies are in the early stages of development.

The company with the highest financing amount is TandemAI, which secured a funding of US$35 million. Since its establishment in December 2021, it has received three rounds of financing in 15 months. Apart from its Series A financing, TandemAI secured a funding of US$25 million in seed and Pre-A rounds in December 2021.

The company released a one-stop online collaboration platform for drug discovery. This platform integrates rigorous first-principle scientific modeling, AI algorithms, optimized high-performance computing clusters with both software and hardware, and cutting-edge wet-lab experiments, significantly enhancing the efficiency of exploring compound spaces.

Syneron Tech, incubated by Innovation Works’ top-tier program, raised financing at the fastest pace. Established in April 2022, it consecutively received seed and angel round investments from three funds under Innovation Works. In less than a year after its inception, Syneron Tech completed its Pre-A round of financing with an amount of US$13 million.

The company is dedicated to accelerating the R&D of synthetic peptide drugs through AI and has constructed an AI+ synthetic peptide drug R&D platform. This platform enables a full-chain empowerment of AI in the design, screening, synthesis, characterization, and optimization of synthetic peptide drugs. It has been applied to the R&D of several potential "first-in-class" synthetic peptide drug pipelines.

As of the end of September, two AI pharmaceutical companies have received Series C financing. These companies are Drug Farm and DP Technology.